Page:Rebels and reformers (1919).djvu/44

 and appeals to a great number of people, and we are agreed that he is one of the most lovable and heroic characters in history.

William was born in 1533 in the German castle of Dillenburg, the eldest of twelve children. His mother, Juliana of Stolberg, was a woman of great character—a wise woman and religious in the truest sense of the word. To the end of her life she was the adviser of her sons and a support and comfort to her many children. Several of them inherited her character, and principally William of Orange himself, and another, Louis. William's father, also called William, was a good man who had gone through hard times, and who had finally, slowly but surely embraced the Protestant religion. He appears to us to be rather a washed-out edition of his remarkable son.

Orange spent the first eleven years of his life at Dillenburg. The great fortress rose from a rocky bend of a river, with towers and battlements and gateways such as one sees in mediæval pictures, and could hold a thousand people. Here all his mother's children were born, and she managed her huge household in such a way as to become quite celebrated as the best mother and housewife in the country.

When William was eleven years old he inherited, through the death of a cousin, great lands in the Netherlands, and the little province of Orange. Thus he became, in spite of his tender years, a very important person, and through the wish of the Emperor